Mycenaean Names in Homer

Extract

Personal names in ordinary use between the fall of Knossos and the fall of Mycenae could have got into the tradition of heroic poetry in three ways. They could have persisted in common use (as some certainly did); or they could have existed as a stock of ‘names suitable for heroes’ on which the poets drew at will; or they could have come down attached to stories or incidents or professions, with the probability that some of them are historical. An analysis of all the personal names in the tablets is a task for someone better qualified to judge the probabilities of identification, but there may be some value in a preliminary study of the fifty-eight names listed by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick as ‘Names which can be exactly paralleled in Homer’. For the cautious restraint shown throughout their great book is as good a guarantee of accurate interpretation as could be found. The names are fairly evenly divided between Iliadand Odyssey—17 in both, 29 in the Iliad only and 12 in the Odyssey only—and of these Ilos or Iros must be omitted. The number seems too small to show significant tendencies, and it is the more surprising that they are found to cluster round certain localities or heroes. Names found in the tablets are printed in italics.